


The Poppy Rose

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Mechanics, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, background EngBel and EngPortBel atm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 11:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19745152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: Steampunk/Coffee Shop/WeresJust around several labyrinthine corners from the sky-docks, well-placed between that bustling district and the warehouses and a quick run across the rooftops from the train station, The Poppy Rose Coffeeshop is an island of suspiciously idyllic calm in the middle of the endless noise of civilisation. Entrance is one shilling unless you have one of the coffeeshop’s two membership tokens - both of which being almost identical to each other, except one, marked with a poppy flower etched on one of its ivory faces, costs six guineas per annum, and the other, marked with a rose, can only be obtained as a gift for life.A series of vignettes in The Poppy Rose Coffeeshop, ran by proud proprietors, Arthur and Emma Kirkland - only half a front for their illegal trade in mending skyships out back. Featuring friends and lovers, werewolves and thieves, and the occasional blatant lying to the police. And coffee. So much coffee.





	The Poppy Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArchangelUnmei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelUnmei/gifts).



> Crossposted from tumblr, with chapters unknown because I plan to come back and write some more scenes for this AU at a later date.
> 
> So once upon a time I had an unpublished steampunk fic where fem!Port and Spain were a sister/brother pair of dashing international jewel thieves, and EngBel were a married couple with a very - happily - open relationship when it came to pretty and dangerous Iberian women. Also they ran a semi-illegal repairs workshop for skyships out of the back of their home, so. Anyway, I never explicitly said Spain _wasn’t_ a werewolf in that universe, so now I hope you’ll be happy with a development of that AU where all the idiots involved are at least _trying_ to pretend they can have legitimate careers. (Some better than others.)
> 
> For an idea of the money used in this, 1 shilling is roughly equivalent to 5p in today’s money, and 1 guinea = £1.05.  
> Prior to decimalisation, 12 pence (12d) = 1 shilling (1s, often called a _bob_ ), and 20 shillings (20s) = 1 pound (£1, often called a _sovereign_ ).  
> 1 guinea (1gn) = 1 pound and 1 shilling (£1/1/-) = 21 shillings (21/-). Guineas were considered more ‘gentlemanly’ than pounds; you paid tradesmen with pounds, but a gentleman - artists, upper-class professionals, certain kinds of doctors - with guineas. This continued into the Victorian era despite the fact the Great Recoinage in 1816 replaced the guinea as the major unit of currency with the pound.

Just around several labyrinthine corners from the sky-docks, well-placed between that bustling district and the warehouses and a quick run across the rooftops from the train station, The Poppy Rose Coffeeshop is an island of suspiciously idyllic calm in the middle of the endless noise of civilisation. Entrance is one shilling unless you have one of the coffeeshop’s two membership tokens - both of which being almost identical to each other, except one, marked with a poppy flower etched on one of its ivory faces, costs six guineas per annum, and the other, marked with a rose, can only be obtained as a gift for life.

Anyone who pays a shilling can get in The Poppy Rose’s front doors to enjoy the services inside, and anyone with a token can head upstairs to the much _nicer_ services on the first floor, basking in the light streaming through the stained glass dome that made up part of the sun lounge’s roof and watching the muffled shadows of the skyships flying overhead. Anyone with a _rose_ token can ask for a private room to talk to The Poppy Rose’s proprietors about the ‘extra’ services available at the coffeeshop ‘between cups’. 

Francis Bonnefoy and Antonio Fernandez Carriedo have a rose token apiece, which is a irritating state of affairs born of good business sense rather than Arthur, one of the two espoused proprietors of The Poppy Rose, being happy to call either of them _friends._ Francis has been the fancy French bane of Arthur’s life since their shared childhood, but their grudging respect for each other has always meant that they’ve covered each other’s backs when trouble has cropped up, and directed work appropriate to their individual skills each other’s way. Antonio is a werewolf, a skilled thief and an _idiot,_ and Arthur puts up with him because his equally larcenous, three times more beautiful, older sister Gloria is a delight - and a frequent guest in Arthur and his wife’s marriage bed whenever she wanders back to the city, to the pleasure of everyone involved. (A few people not immediately involved occasionally profess to have _opinions._ Arthur had gotten into a fight about it once, but now he just leaves it to his wife and Gloria to handle - at their insistence -, as both women in full steam are exceptionally good at making grown adults cry. Either with a thorough tongue-lashing, a cup of scalding liquid to the lap, or robbing the troublemaker blind.)

Unfortunately, the employment of one Gilbert Beilschmidt, lover of both Francis and Antonio, at The Poppy Rose had also made good business sense. Arthur had finally given in and employed the German idiot when the workload for the coffeeshop’s backroom dealings had gotten too much for Emma and him to handle alone, because Gilbert, although deeply annoying and unable to brew a decent cup of _anything_ out front, has deft fingers and a sharp mind suited for mechanics, a blithe willingness to get his hands dirty, and a shared sympathy for and understanding of Arthur’s style of percussive maintenance. When it comes to illegally mending skyships and other related craft, they work well together.

When it comes to Gilbert serving anyone coffee, Arthur only lets the German serve his lovers. And no-one else.

Turning up to make an annoyance of himself as usual, Francis’ face when he takes a short sip of his drink is _magnificent._

“I cannot believe,” he says, _delicately,_ sitting in his usual stool at the upstairs counter in the sun lounge - in the most flattering light, with Antonio at his side and opposite where Arthur is working simply so he can blatantly stare at Arthur’s rolled-up sleeves and exposed forearms and make lewd comments about them - and wrinkling his pointy French nose like a disgusted cat, “that you actually charged me eight pence for this abomination. I have tasted better engine oil.”

Arthur, too busy weighing out coffee beans on his ever-wobbly set of scales (Gloria sat on them once and they have never been the same since), does his very best not to smirk. (The last time he’d smirked, Francis had lunged across the counter at him and they had smashed a jar full of two pounds of freshly-ground coffee on the floor and tore both their waistcoats.) “If it were engine oil, I would’ve charged you a sovereign.”

Francis makes an angry little _pah_ noise, perfectly pitched over the murmurings of the other customers in the room behind him where Gilbert is tromping about collecting used china (none of the customers look traumatised yet, so it’s a good day), setting down his cup in its saucer with an offended _chink._

Arthur shrugs, putting down the bag of beans in his hands as soon as his scales balance. Ties the bag closed. “It’s a decent roast.”

“But what horrors have you _done_ to it?”

“Not me.” Francis should know this by now. Francis _does_ know this by now, the look of realisation crossing his face like freshly-oiled cogwheels making their revolution, a moue of discontent straight behind it because _Arthur’s_ feelings might be a target for his verbal darts, but his lovers are reserved some vague loyal tenderness. “Gilbert has a way with brewing, don’t you think?”

In the background, Gilbert laughs at something someone must have said to him, a sharp, raucous cackle that makes Arthur’s mouth twitch up into a smile at its timing.

“The smell hurts my nose,” Antonio complains, putting down his own cup after one dubious sniff of its contents and pushing it away from him, towards Francis. He stretches out his upper body across the sun-warmed counter in its place instead, pouting - for it is three days until the next full moon, and Antonio is always at his whiniest near the full moon, even during the daytime. “Can you dissolve metal in it? I think you can dissolve metal in it.”

Arthur doesn’t doubt it. “We stopped using the silver-plated spoons for exactly that reason.”

Antonio’s pout trebles in both size and ridiculousness at that, which, naturally, means that Francis must immediately pet the idiot’s curly head beside him and coo nonsense at Antonio for a full five minutes - though not before he makes one more sardonic comment to Arthur across the counter between them.

“How conscientious you are towards your werewolf customers.”

Or Arthur would just like to not ruin his good silver, thank you very much. “Equal opportunity to die for everyone.”

“Nobody _else_ drinks Gilbert’s coffee,” Antonio sulks, though the extended jut of his lower lip is lost in the shadow of another skyship passing by overhead. At times like this, it gets difficult to remember that Antonio actually has _fangs_ behind his silliness.

Again, Arthur shrugs, unsympathetic and far too pleased with himself. Antonio can’t do anything more than snarl at him or his sister will have his bollocks. “He has to do _something_ out front so my books don’t look fraudulent, and, if you think I’m going to let him practice his coffee-brewing on the general public, you have another think coming.”

Antonio shifts so his chin rests on the counter, and his eyes, usually bright things beneath the curly mess of his dark hair, bore into Arthur reproachfully. “I am a _paying customer._ ”

Beside him, Francis coughs. Pointedly.

Antonio blinks at him, innocently concerned. “…Did the coffee make you sick?”

“ _Mon cher -_ ”

“The _frog,_ ” says Arthur, taking pity because watching a single man trying to take on Antonio’s (sometimes deliberate) obtuseness alone can be painful, “is a paying customer. _You,_ on the other hand, are merely his and my employee’s bauble that likes to moult on my coffeeshop’s furniture once a month.”

“Sometimes twice a month,” says Gilbert, announcing the return of his presence with the cheerful _slam_ of his full, rattling tray down on the counter beside Antonio’s head. (Francis jumps. Antonio startles, slips sideways, and almost falls off his stool. Arthur winces at the treatment of his used china.) “Eyebrows, you’ve really got to tell me how you get rid of the fur.”

“Is _that_ why you still work here?” Antonio grouses, clutching at Gilbert’s arm beside him to haul himself upright again. So much for the Iberian’s enthusiasm earlier on in the month that _someone_ in their acquaintanceship was trying to walk the path of the straight and narrow. “To learn cleaning secrets?”

Gilbert turns, pressing his toothy grin against the Iberian’s grumpy temple with a kiss. “People would _kill_ for the secret to removing werewolf fur, Hündchen.”

Antonio _hmph_ s into his throat, seemingly trying to burrow under Gilbert’s high collar with his nose. “We definitely don’t come here for the coffee.”

Gilbert, who, contrary to all evidence, continues to deny that the coffee he brews could eat its way through the average unprepared person’s stomach lining before they have drained the cup, sulks and jabs his chin into Antonio’s skull, pale against tan. “I made that with _love,_ Hohlkopf.”

“The love part was good,” says Antonio, blithely uncaring. “It is the rest of the drink that was terrible.”

“You didn’t even _drink_ any of it,” Arthur points out, stepping out of the immediate range of flailing limbs and taking his scales with him so he can pour his earlier measurements out into a clean jar. “If you had, I doubt you would be here to complain about it.”

Gilbert glowers at him for that, wrapping his arms protectively around Antonio as though Antonio currently isn’t the one spearheading the criticism of his attempts at coffee. (Antonio shamelessly snuggles in.) “ _Francis_ drank some.”

“ _Francis,_ ” says Francis with a deep melodramatic sigh, “has experience steeling his stomach since he grew up eating Arthur’s attempts at cooking as a child.” Gilbert gives him a wounded look, so Francis reaches out to consolingly pat/grope his nearest arm. “I am very sorry, _mon chéri,_ but it is true.”

Gilbert looks at Arthur again, wearing a pained expression similar to the one he had gotten the last time he had been fixing a clogged-up engine out back and Emma had utterly failed to notice that he had been topless and flexing for her attention. “You can throw them out, right? I know they’ve got rose tokens, but you can throw them out?”

“Your own paramours!” Francis gasps, indignant. (Antonio, still wrapped up in Gilbert’s arms and looking quite happy about it, reaches over in a show of insincere commiseration and pats Francis on the thigh.)

Arthur raises his eyebrow at Gilbert, still carefully pouring beans into a jar. “When I can overcharge them for terrible coffee?”

“You _overcharge_ us?” Antonio asks, all olive hurt eyes like he and Arthur are actually friends and completely ignoring the earlier part of the conversation where they had, in fact, established that Francis is always the one who pays for the both of them every time they show up to bother Gilbert at work.

“Of course,” says Arthur, and in turn takes great pleasure in ignoring the way Gilbert, Francis _and_ Antonio all frown, glare and look terribly disappointed in him. He tips his head at Gilbert. “What do you think pays his wages?”


End file.
